This is pretty much the only game I play, so I'll continue my tradition of providing my opinion on the series. Last year I was rather unimpressed with the game, there just didn't seem to be any real effort into improvements despite a few new features. If you chose to save money last year, do the roster updates and continue with 2015's release. Now might be a good time to update.

First, I have been begging for some new commentary since the series was introduced. They brought in Eric Karros last season, but it was still the same old comments and it really seemed like when Karros made a comment he was just echoing the other commentators. Well Karros is gone this season, and so is Steve Lyons for that matter. Matt Vasgersian remains and is joined by Harold Reynolds and Dan Plesac this time around. Some people like Harold Reynolds as a commentator, I'm not one of them. I just find him a bit monotone and boring. However, new comments big +.

Facial definition of players is somewhat improved from last season, but the plays in the game itself seems more fluid than ever, and whenever a big play or a close base stealing attempt goes down it resorts to slow-motion. I'm sure that feature can be turned off, but I kinda like it. They've also added some different camera angles to better customize your game experience.

Something they brought in last season (which I didn't think would interest me, but eventually did) is the collecting of baseball cards, equipment and such. Although I didn't really get into the mission features (which has returned this year), I found I just enjoyed earning and collecting the cards. You even have the ability to sell duplicates to earn stubs to buy more packs of cards. I pre-ordered the game (the only benefit of which appears to be the Griffey Jr. rookie card provided) and purchased the deluxe game version, which came with 30 regular card packs, and a handful of limited edition packs, 11,000 stubs and a bunch of add-ons I haven't even checked out yet. Primarily I like the franchise mode and stick to that.

I did toy around with the New Diamond Dynasty feature on the 2016 version. You basically build a team from cards you've collected, and then play your team against other real life people also playing the game. I'm going to try and get more into that this season as I actually enjoyed it.

I'm currently only just starting my 2nd game in re-drafted franchise mode. I'm building up on difficulty levels in Dynamic mode (difficulty self-adjusts based on your game play). Overall I regret spending so much on the deluxe edition, I should have just bought the game, but I think the improvements over 2016 justify the purchase.

The only negative is that anything that requires on on-line connection is very laggy at the moment. The devs have acknowledged this on social media and they are working to fix it.

Any experience with Road to the Show? I'm about 7 seasons into a 2016 RTTS, and only want to get the new one if that experience has been improved.

So I started up a RTTS for you. First of all there are far more options to customize your player than ever. For example 49 different head shapes, countless different hair styles, and there is now an adjustable slide graph to customize skin color. When scouts/managers/coaches/advisor talk to you, now you can chose a response to their comments. From what I've seen you can be an arrogant douchebag, be very humble, or take the middle road with your responses. You start with a skill evaluation (hitting, running, and fielding. Scouts talk to you, your coach talks to you. Then you play some showcase games (I'm about ready to start the second) speaking with your advisor in between games from the clubhouse. So even one game in, there are some definite enhancements to the RTTS format. BTW you can also upload your 2016 RTTS to the cloud, and continue it on 2017. So the time you've put into it isn't wasted.

UPDATE: After the 2nd showcase game the rookie draft begins. I was taken 19th overall by the Astros. I then had an option to go to college, which I imagine would be useful if you didn't want to play for the team that drafted you (I don't know, I didn't choose that option). I chose to sign with them. There was a 3rd option, I don't remember what it was.

Here's a screenshot. I named my player Bobo Benitez. I thought it was funny.

So I caught a facebook video earlier today that I can't find now (I intended to post a link), basically it was talking about how there was a big surprise in store for MLB The Show fans as far as commentators next season. Speculation is that they will have the actually commentators for each MLB teams home games actually calling the games on MLB The Show. To me that seems very unlikely and very expensive. 0% chance of that happening IMO. I think it will be more along the lines of introducing a female commentator like Jessica Mendoza.

I played it a bit last year. You are basically playing against other online players and trying to gain territories. It's almost like a game of risk. I didn't play it enough to really be able to explain it well.

I started an online franchise with someone I know (and that's it... just the two of us and 28 CPU teams). I'm the Astros, and he's the Dodgers. We did a fantasy draft, and man, the computer is dumb with trades. All it takes to land a star player is trading three players with A potential. I got Kris Bryant, Gary Sanchez and Noah Syndergaard this way. I know it works because my buddy had one of his trades rejected when he offered a B potential guy.

My hitting is way behind my pitching. I cannot pitch with lefties for the life of me.

And with the online franchise, it took forever for it to load because the "servers were busy".

I agree Dbacks, it does seem to overvalue prospects. You can turn on Force trades and everything that's within your budget (or theirs) will be accepted. You can turn off the budgets too for that matter. As you've clearly discovered, they still haven't done anything about the slow servers.

I actually popped into this thread because I decided to try Retro Mode, mostly just to earn the associated trophies. The entire feature is shite (I can say shite like a British man and not be censored lol). It isn't RETRO, they just added some old school text. The ball whistles as it flies through the air, and the vocal audio is pretty much just the umpire shouting strike, ball, foul, etc, and occasionally you'll hear the voice of Ken Griffey Jr summing up a play in 5 words or less with something like "What a play". Griffey sounds to be as unimpressed with this mode as I was because there is no emotion in his voice overs at all. That's as retro as it gets. The actual game graphics are the same. I then realized there was an "8-bit Filter" you can turn on (it's actually required for a trophy). However, all that did was pixelize the same image so that it looked like... well, Shite.

Here is an image of "Retro Mode". I couldn't do a screenshot in Retro mode, so this is just from the internet. You can't really tell from the photo, but players facial features are as good as they are in regular mode.

Maybe I'm just an old fart, but this is what I would expect Retro Mode to look like.

I'm digging the game! I'm about halfway through a 29-game season with the Tribe. Lindor looks nothing like he should. I know it's silly, but my biggest gripe is the players' hair. What the hell is going on with that? Guys with long hair, like say Colby Rasmus, look like they have a stiff block of hair instead of flowing locks. I'm also playing Uncharted 4 right now and it's amazing how the hair looks in that game, but in MLB 17 the hair looks like it's from the PS1 era. Otherwise, I'm all about it!

Actually I thought the hair was a big improvement this season. Hair has always been one of the toughest things to perfect in video games. Anyway, so here I am feeding it to the Yankees. 10-0 and I'm not even out of the 4th inning yet. Hitting long balls all over the place. Then I remembered that I switched it to beginner to get the Retro mode trophies and forgot to switch it back to All-Star. SMH.

Found a great way to get stubs quickly. Surprised I never thought of it sooner. Go into the community market. Find a card that has a listed buy price much lower than the listed sell price. Create a bunch of buy orders. Once those are filled, create sell orders at the higher price. The cards listed at 304 are mine. I bought them for 127. You pay a 10% tax when buying, hence why you want a decent price gap.

We take pride in developing and delivering an excellent gaming experience every year for our fans. This year is no different. Unfortunately, we're less than happy with unexpected server issues that have accompanied the launch of MLB The Show 17 and know you are too-for this we apologize.

We've been working without pause to address a number of server and gameplay issues to restore the online experience we had hoped to achieve at launch. Some of these changes have been made visible to our community in the form of patches and in-game messages, while other upgrades haven't been publicized, in the form of back end server updates.

We're pleased to report that these updates have made great strides to address the main issues related to online gameplay and have led to an improved gameplay experience for our fans.

As a token of apology, as well as a thank you to our dedicated community for helping us identify these issues and for your patience as we've worked to address them, we are extending a make-good to anyone who meets the criteria outlined below:

Every PSN ID that played The Show 17 between 3/28 at 12:01 am PT and 5/11 at 1:00 pm PT will receive 10 Standard Packs and 11,000 Stubs, automatically added to their account. Please note that the make-good will be deployed into all effected users account within a week.

I'm so mad. I played a game this morning in Diamond Dynasty for the first time (against the CPU since I'd rather not get destroyed online). I won 5-3 (Matt Shoemaker had 15 Ks), but the servers crashed before it could save. The servers are horrible still.